The present invention relates to a method and a processing system for transferring content between a file and a database.
Description Of The Prior Art
The reference to any prior art in this specification is not, and should not be taken as, an acknowledgement or any form of suggestion that the prior art forms part of the common general knowledge in Australia.
The need for Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) that emerged in the 1980s is likely to grow strongly as the Internet becomes truly pervasive and automated information flow between disparate applications becomes an expectation. The EAI challenge is complex and two-fold. Firstly, a system is required to ensure that information available on one computer can automatically be made available on another computer without human intervention such as re-entering or e-mailing. Secondly, if the data formats are different, translation is necessary.
One common approach is Object Distribution where technologies such as CORBA or RMI are used to make a shared Business Object Model available on separate application instances. The Object Distribution technique typically results in close coupling between the integrated application instances. This implies low latency in information update, but an increased dependence between the applications
Another approach is Message Passing where messages containing application data are sent between application instances. The Message Passing technique results in loose coupling between the integrated instances with an increased latency in information update but improved application independence. The loose coupling places a burden on the Message Passing infrastructure to ensure messages are delivered.
The task of business integration typically involves two application installations, each of which will generally have some form of data store. The communication between them will use an application specific program at each end and Message Transport. These programs have two purposes, to insert data from the source database into a message that the Message Transport can deliver; and to insert the data from a received message into the target database.
Application integration using messaging requires a translation between the application data format and the message format. The complexity of this translation depends on the similarity between the data format and the message format.
Given a defined Message Format and a defined Target Structure, a custom solution can generally be developed to translate and map between the Message Format and the Target Structure. However, this may only be useable in a particular application. Its development requires the use of skilled resources (in some cases highly skilled where the structures are complex). As a result the development cost is assigned to the single installation, and ongoing software maintenance may be required to cater for Message Format changes and Target Structure changes.
This form of architecture is useful in a number of scenarios.
A first scenario is Business to Business integration where independent businesses or sites require data integrity between logically or physically different sites. For instance, a wholesaler may have need of regular interchange of business information with a number of retailers. In this case the wholesaler will automatically distribute catalogue and pricing information from the wholesaler's financial system to the retailer's financial system. The retailer's financial system will send orders for stock directly to the wholesaler's financial system. The wholesaler's inventory management system will notify the retailer's financial system of order dispatch. The retailer's inventory management system will notify the wholesaler's financial system of receipt of goods, and the wholesaler's financial system will send an invoice to the retailer's financial system.
Another scenario is multi-tiered application integration with different applications fulfilling a variety of functions in an organisation. For instance, a business has a web-application capable of taking orders, a warehouse management system and a financial system. The web application will send a request for stock availability to the warehouse management system. The warehouse management system will report on stock availability to the web application. The web application will send confirmation of payment details to the financial system. The web application will send order details to the warehouse management system. The financial system will send approval to ship to the warehouse management system.